


A Knife to the Seam

by ArvenaPeredhel



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Clothing Damage, Friendship, Gen, Sexual Humor, Tyelpë is Drunk, honestly these two are my definition of platonic soulmates, the mature rating is due to the topic of discussion and Tyelpë's pants not anything these two do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-04
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25711495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvenaPeredhel/pseuds/ArvenaPeredhel
Summary: Whoever said elves were dignified probably never met one when they were drunk.
Relationships: Celebrimbor | Telperinquar & Narvi
Comments: 32
Kudos: 76





	A Knife to the Seam

**Author's Note:**

> I felt inspired to write something with these two - I've been floating in Writer's Block Land for a while, and I think this might have snapped me out of it. They're my ultimate Tolkien friendship, really, and that's pretty astonishing considering how many great friendships we get in-canon.

Narvi was expecting the knock on her door. 

Beyond the walls of her little room, in Ost-in-Edhil proper, there was a ball going on. She disliked balls on principle, preferring quiet evenings spent in reading and occasional contemplation of some metallurgical abstract. In this, she was set apart even from others of her people - her fellow  _ khazâd  _ were quite fond of parties, and revelry, provided it was the right  _ sort  _ of revelry. Her abstinence from any and all communal merriment made her even more of an unusual figure than the rest of her habits; she didn’t care. 

The knock came again, and she smiled softly and pushed back from her desk into the middle of her room. Her stool had wheels on it, which was convenient if you spent days at a time moving from bed to desk and back again, and now it served her well as she slid toward the door. 

“What do you want, Kibil?” she called. She had little doubts as to the identity of her caller. The whole of the Gwaith knew where her room was, but few of them bothered to call, and fewer still would knock on her closed door after sunset.

“I need your help,” a muffled voice answered from the other side of the door. “I’m dying.”

“You’re not dying, Kibil,” she answered, shifting herself across the stone floor until she could fiddle with the doorknob. “You’re probably very drunk, and so you  _ think  _ you’re dying, but you’ll feel better after you lie down for a few hours and drink your weight in water.” The knob turned at last - it was a new design for a door, something that one of the others in her circle had come up with that allowed for more security than a traditional latch, but it was more difficult to lock - and the door pulled inwards, bringing with it a very tall, very distressed elf who happened to be her brother.

Curufinwë Tyelperinquar Curufinwion (Noldo by birth, dwarf by choice) was dressed in his finest suit, all done in black velvet with silver and gold embroidery. His trousers clung to every inch of him, so tightly fitted that they had to have been sewn onto him while he was standing up, and his white silk shirt and waistcoat and tailcoat were no more forgiving. When this Mannish fashion had come to the city, he’d wasted no time in adopting it as his own, though he’d taken it from a subdued piece of formalwear to an experience in rich fabrics and metallic embellishment. His hair was up, pinned behind his head in a series of elegant knots, and he’d even bothered to add a subtle rouge to his lips. Despite his purposefully extravagant appearance, though, he looked utterly miserable, staggering upright as the door opened. 

He was, apparently, on the short side of ‘average’ by his own people’s standards, but he still towered over her. It was this that concerned her - he was obviously unsteady on his feet, clinging to the doorframe, and if he fell on top of her, they’d both get tangled in the legs and wheels of her stool. Narvi pushed back from the door and sized him up, putting enough distance between them that if he fell it would only be  _ his  _ face that suffered.

“I was right,” she said, taking in his flushed face and pained expression. “You  _ are  _ drunk. When will you learn that you’re a lightweight?” 

“Never,” he muttered. “I like drinking too much.”

“Well, at least you’re honest with yourself,” she answered, getting off the stool and taking a closer look at him. “What’s the trouble?”

He made a face, wincing every time his booted feet shifted. “Suit.”

Another glance told Narvi everything she needed to know, and she promptly burst out laughing.

“‘S not funny!” her brother protested, taking a step into the room and groaning.

“Sure, Kibil,” she said, eyes bright with mirth. “It’s not funny that you were so fixed on a perfect fit that you forgot to leave yourself room to get excited, and then some handsome  _ nér  _ turned your head, and suddenly you had a seam threatening to bisect your balls. Not funny in the slightest.”

“You’re a brute,” he moaned, moving closer to her. Every motion of his hips spelled out the truth of her guess - there was a telltale bulge at his groin, pressed up against the fabric of his high-waisted trousers.

“I’m the brute?” she asked, fishing at her belt and drawing out a knife. “I’m not the one who’s doing this to you. It’s entirely  _ your  _ choice. Take responsibility for it.”

“You should have stopped me. You knew this would happen.”

“Oh, so you do remember earlier today. I wondered if the wine had soaked into your brain yet.” Narvi got back onto her stool, pushing off from the floor and gliding over to her brother. “Hold still.”

“What are you doing?” Tyelperinquar cried, flinching back from her when he saw the gleam of the knife-blade in the lamplight. “Get - agh!” His already-unsteady feet betrayed him, sending him tumbling back onto her bed as his arms and legs flailed wildly around his head and torso. 

Narvi burst out laughing, which earned her a pillow thrown at her own head; she dodged it and watched it hit the far wall harmlessly. 

“I’m going to have to start attending these things if  _ you  _ keep making a spectacle of yourself,” she said, gesturing with the knife. “Get up. Take your boots off, and then put your hands on the end of the bed and brace yourself.”

“Why do you need a knife?”

“Why do you  _ think,  _ o great genius of the Fortress of the Elves? You had yourself sewn into that torture device, and I’m no great seamstress.”

Tyelperinquar paled further. “Oh no you don’t. This is imported velvet!”

“And your cock is perfectly replaceable, and you  _ won’t  _ be upset if it takes six months to heal.” She pointed at him with the blade. “It’s cutting off circulation to your hips. You’ll be upset forever, and  _ I’ll  _ have to deal with your bad moods. Stand up.”

“Fine,” her brother mumbled, kicking off his boots and staggering to his feet. “If you tear anything you owe me a replacement.”

“If I tear anything it’ll be to save you the trouble,” she answered. “That’s payment enough.” 

Tyelperinquar moved to the end of her bed, which was high enough off of the ground that he could and did sleep comfortably in it when he didn’t feel like returning to his own room, and braced his hands against the foot and its curling wood embellishments. Narvi sighed, and slid close to him on her stool, and felt around for the side seams to his trousers. 

“Why do you do this shit, anyway?” she asked.

“Do - do what?” he answered, flinching when her knife pushed through thread and grazed his skin.

“Hold still, or I  _ will  _ cut you, and it won’t be pleasant, and it’ll be your own damn fault.” It was slow, careful work, slicing each stitch open and sparing his skin a new cut. “All this - this  _ peacocking,  _ you know? The drinking, the extravagant suits, the - the  _ this.”  _ She gestured with the knife to his trousers. “You’re nothing like the person they all think you are, Kibil. And  _ we  _ know - the Gwaith, I mean. We know you, or at least more of you.” Another cut, and a long sigh. “I think I’m probably the only one here who’s got any clue of who you really are.” 

“That’s on purpose,” he muttered, sounding far less drunk and far more cynical.

“What?”

“Keep them looking at me, and spellbound by my flamboyant nature and ebullient charm, and they don’t have time to get angry about the stars on my door, or my banner, or everywhere else.” He let out a soft sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh of his own, drunk enough that as he spoke he slid between his habitual Sindarin, oddly-accented Quenya, and bits of Khuzdul. “I’m the  _ nice  _ Fëanorian. The  _ good  _ Fëanorian. The unusual recluse, the absent-minded genius. I don’t care about honor, or the family name, or property rights, or revenge, or -  _ oh,  _ that feels good.” His voice broke off into a low groan as enough of the seam gave way for his hips to get a little relief. Narvi was down to his knee by now, and moved off of her stool onto her knees.

“You’re very lucky I’m as good with languages as I am with stone, Kibil, or I’d be very annoyed with you,” she replied in Westron, hoping it would make him laugh. It did, and when he answered it was in that same Mannish tongue. 

“You can keep up with me,” he said, and then switched once more back to the speech of her people, which he’d learned upon his adoption into her clan. “You always do.”

“So it’s an act, then?” she asked in Sindarin again, smiling at his compliment.

“Of course it’s an act. If I bothered to be  _ myself,  _ and talk about what I  _ really  _ want, do you think I’d be half as popular?”

“All you want to do is prove your family name isn’t only good for bloodshed,” she said, at last slicing through the final hem and leaving one leg bare. “Is that so bad?”

“When your family is mine? Yes.” 

“Well, I wouldn’t know,” Narvi admitted, moving to the other side. Her second cut was quicker, and cleaner, and less cautious, quickly baring the flesh beneath the velvet. “All I know is that  _ you’re  _ my family, and I give a damn about you, and you’ve got a home with my people.” She stood up, her work done; the trousers fell to the floor in pieces. “You always will.”

Tyelperinquar turned to face her; his eyes were bright with sudden tears.

“You’re so kind to me,” he told her earnestly, sounding very drunk once more. “You - I don’t deserve this.” 

“Oh, hush,” Narvi answered, waving him off as she slid her knife back into her belt. “Get into my bed and go to sleep. I’m not sending you back to your own rooms like that.”

“But the ball - !”

“You intend to go back to the ball in just your stockings?”

“Oh.”

She pointed to her bed. “Lie down and shut your eyes and get some sleep. Or do I need to cut you out of your top half, too?”

“I’m fine,” he said unconvincingly, “I’m fine.” He did manage to strip out of the rest of his suit, though it wasn’t without several stitches popping, and by the time he’d finished and gotten the rest of the way into bed Narvi had fetched her pillow from where he’d thrown it and found him a damp rag to wash his face with. 

“Sleep, Kibil,” she ordered, pressing a kiss to his cheek once he’d set the rag aside. “You’re family, and that means I have to look after you, even when you’re being an idiot.” 

“Fine,” he muttered, too tired to argue. He lay down on his side, buried beneath a pair of overstuffed pillows, and shut his eyes as he drew the bedclothes up around himself. In a handful of breaths, he was asleep, more or less dead to the world. 

Narvi smiled at him, laughing a little at the sight of his poor ruined suit, and then turned her attention back to her books and her sketches. 

_ I’ll send for someone to get him a robe in the morning,  _ she decided.  _ Once he’s well and truly hung over, and begging me for proper cocoa and chocolate biscuits.  _

_ I know he’s lonely. I hope that whoever he finds to fill that loneliness sees past the pageantry and gives a damn about  _ him. 

_ I’ll cut them open like I did that suit if they don’t.  _


End file.
